Cambridge RDA Proposed Sensory Trail

What is a sensory trail?

A sensory trail is an interactive environment that can be ridden through on horseback or walked through, designed to stimulate the senses. The stimuli may be both man-made such as specific bespoke artworks or installations or natural such as plantings or landscape changes. The purpose of this is to create a stimulating and challenging environment for both the horses, riders and volunteers to explore as part of the therapy programme that Cambridge RDA offers.

Many of our riders struggle with overloading of sensory input and many find verbalising their feelings and interpretations of senses challenging. Exploring different senses in a non-threatening safe environment will make a huge difference to them.

We also do a lot of our regular therapy sessions in an indoor arena and the joy and excitement of getting out and riding in a different setting is a huge therapeutic benefit to our riders (and volunteers and horses!).

We have bigger aims for the cambridge RDA sensory trail and would hope it could be a place that the wider cambridge community could utilise and enjoy; such as schools as an educational resource.

By engaging local Artists we are hoping this sensory trail will become a community project, with all sorts of different groups working together on a little bit to create the complete project. This would give it a unique Community feel and would allow local artists and groups to share and showcase their work to the wider community.

We propose that each station needs to have a sensory output and each station needs a community sponsor. The sponsor may be the artist or group that carries out the work (design and development). Or they may be a person that would rather sponsor the station with funds for another person/group to take on the station. Either way each station would be clearly marked with the designer, developer and funder to acknowledge you for your contribution.

Some stations can be interactive - Os and Xs game made of wood that can be done from pony height for example.